Reality TV Gets Gonged

A while back when the cast of Cheers decided to hold NBC hostage for what was at the time the highest per episode pay scale, studio executives – ever quick to pick up on a trend – realized they were in trouble. I wasn’t there, so I don’t know for sure, but there was likely an emergency meeting called among all the 13-year-old network executives to come up with a plan to spend less money on television programming, taste be damned.

One can assume ideas were tossed around such as using live ammunition in crime dramas, people really dying in hospital dramas, or perhaps very funny mass executions in sitcoms. As with all good art, the lawyers more than likely got in the way, citing some arcane law about killing off the actors. In the midst of their confusion, there must have been a single voice in the darkness who said, “What if there were no actors?” There were probably a lot of harummphs and tut-tutting, but soon nobody could find a flaw in the plan. Well, maybe it would be nice to assume there was at least one objection on artistic and entertainment grounds but, hey, this is Hollywood and there would be no Hollywood ending for what television programming would become.

Using the theory that average people will do anything to be on television – eat worms, dress like the opposite sex, move in with a house of strangers and do a lot of crying, etc. – reality television was born, and the slow death of quality entertainment hastened.

This isn’t to say there aren’t some shows worth watching, and I’ll leave it up to others to debate the merits of each of these shows, but the bottom line is that networks are making billions off of the millions of Americans without shame. But there is good news. Just last week concluded a new show, America Has Talent, which answered two questions: America doesn’t have talent and the pool of new show ideas is drying up.

Never fear as I have a number of new shows rattling around my head (which, I admit, doesn’t leave room for much else). At least one of these new and improved ideas will be coming to a network near you soon as the executives, the lost boys of a lost generation, comb the Internet looking for inspiration to steal.

So here are a few:

In keeping with America Has Talent, how about one that more people can qualify and identify with, such as America Has a Penis? Haven’t worked out how to prove the contestants’ eligibility yet but, hey, I am Creative, that’s Legal’s problem.

I was watching The Girls Next door the other day. It offers a lot to Humanity by showcasing an 80-year-old Hugh Hefner with a half dozen girl friends ranging in age from 18 to 22. It’s amazing how much Hef sees these girls for the true inner value beneath the silicon. Now, would it be such a stretch if there was a sequel to this with the same name, but starring James Mark Karr. Let that one roll around in your head a while, oh lurking network exec.

Athletes are changing the way we view them, why not view them on television in a way that rewards body-building enhancements and cheating? How about a show that puts a number of steroid-using football players in a dorm setting equipped with state of the art weight room facility and, just to make it interesting, provide a $1 million prize to the athlete who is the strongest, fastest, best built and scariest one of the bunch. Each week the number of contestants would be reduced through a vote of television viewers or through natural causes such as heart attacks, fatal beatings and drug overdose. Let’s call the show “Roid Rage”.

ESPN could carry a show that mixes popular sports such as baseball, football or basketball where the rule book is tossed out. In basketball, a player would be given unlimited fouls and could use whatever means necessary to stop an opponent. Very quickly Ron Artest would be a top player and Charles Oakley would get signed by Isaiah Thomas to a contract that would exceed the budget of not just the New York Knicks, but the City of New York (and then Thomas would hide in the basement of the Garden because he knows Oak would have to kill him on general principles).

I could suggest similar shows in baseball or football, but there may be no obvious difference between what they are now and what they would look like without rules. Certainly once you get to 100 home runs in a baseball season or a linebacker kills his seventh quarterback, there will no longer be any sport left in the sport.

One has to give MTV appropriate credit for its role in furthering reality TV. After all, the mind-numbed geniuses at this goofball network gave us “The Real World.” Seriously, how real can the world be when everyone on the show is selected on the basis or race, sexual orientation and willingness to drink, cry, complain, throw about slurs on command and generally be a failure at life? And then several cameras are thrown in and the people are asked to “act natural.” I propose a show that really is real. Stick cameras in the homes of unwitting families and let’s watch them fight, write out checks for the car insurance, write their blog (everyone has one by now) and sit in front of the television watching reality TV. This show may be as close to reality as it gets.

My kids will probably say that I am just old-fashioned and still too caught up with shows that can only be seen on Nick At Night. But my generation was there at the start of the sitcom and it grew from the silly (and often funny) shows such as The Beverly Hillbillies, Gilligan’s Island, and Green Acres, to the creative and witty shows like Mary Tyler Moore, Bob Newhart, All In The Family, Mash, St. Elsewhere, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, Taxi and eventually Cheers.

We had our bombs, to be sure, and the new generation of shows should have taken its cue from the first “talent” reality show and called it a day. As with the talentless Gong Show, these new network executives wouldn’t have lasted thirty seconds before the lovely Jaye P. Morgan grabbed the gong hammer and sent them all home early.